The medium not the message
Today was a pretty ordinary day for life in this new century. The day began with a videoconference over IP that linked the nine English school boards up. For the first time ever. I guess nobody felt the need to do such a thing before, because it didn’t involve any new toys, and it didn’t require anyone to spend hours in setup. It just worked. The one odd note was that while I was linking our conference room, someone in the Montreal room said “I know you; we used to work together about twenty years ago”. Which we had. The medium, not the message, because people have been running into people for a long time now; just not by videoconference. Those innovative souls at Skype today made all outgoing phone calls in North America (Skpye calls, not ALL calls) free until next year. Financially very innovative; a company that had almost free stuff making it even more almost free. I can feel the fearful shivers of Bell from here… So, I called my sister just to talk using my computer. Again, the medium, not the message. I do talk to most of my sisters from time to time; the others are around, somewhere, just not in the same communication space as me. Maybe this even more free dimension will have an effect there, too. I guess that I’ll just have to become more verbal/more verbose. Too many tools and not enough incentives. Too many ways and means and not enough projects. I still don’t videoconference with friends and family, although there’s enough hardware around that I’m running out of reasons.
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